#i'm Sure it happens also in little pockets of like north america and europe but so uncommonly that people are surprised about it

[caimitos]

sometimes i forget that like. possession isn't a super common thing in other parts of the world

[theportuguesewolf]

AMERICAN PAIN

Umberto Eco once said (and I'm quoting from memory): North Americans are the only people who can worship Snow-White and Jaws with the same fervour. 

Yesterday, at the Moonspell Q&A, I got many questions about returning to the US and tour. Please take this with a pinch of salt, yet we have a private joke running in the band which is that all our North-American fans can fit in a plane and should come to Europe where they could see us properly, with a show based in more than mere energy of surviving through the night.

When we are at odds with life in America and read these "come to America" comments ,we, jokingly, add: Come to the US so we won't show up.

Last tour alongside Eleine and Oceans of Slumber wasn't fun for me. The venues were kinda empty, the streets were dirty and dangerous and the motivation simply wasn't there. Sure, we can still deliver the goods; naturally I can still have fun with the many things 'Merica has to offer from the amazing landscapes, to crazy Vegas, and libraries, bookshops, and street food and I will for sure miss it ( I already do) but I can't see at the moment taking another trip to the States and loosing money and time and being very depressed again, about it all.

Last night, I told you a little of my unfortunate encounter with a "gang" in NY in the hotel we're staying prior to our return trip to Portugal but the shortage of time made me default on some details and I'd like to share it more completely, if you don't mind:

I was minding my own business and ruminating about the past month on the road, while keeping an eye on our gear , when I was approached by a black young man who asked me, rather rudely, for my phone number which I promptly refused to give him.

Used, so it seems, to get his way around things and people, he immediately started to be aggravated, while I tried to explain to him, to no effect, what was I doing there and that I was okay in giving him the number of our bus driver as he "needed" to have all the phone numbers of the proprietors of the vehicles parked in the hotel lot.  Fair enough.

But, seeing the way this young man escalated things on his own, no more explanations could I offer and he just started to act out on the parking lot and shouting threats at me. I went to the reception to call security and indeed there was a "guard" there, who tried to approach this angry person nicely, but the die was cast. I went to him myself (again) and tried to reason with him and even offered an apology because we were, definitely, lost in translation, but he started to offend me, calling all the names in the book that I shan't repeat here.

He added: "You'll get what you deserve" and in 10 minutes time, a van parked near the hotel reception and a Gang of four black individuals came out of the car, while the previous guy was shouting at me, constantly, that he wanted to see what I was going to do now.

I am a father, a husband, a singer, a writer, an entrepreneur but , above all, I am a simple man. And it was a simple man that I went to the gang "leader" and explained him who I was, where I came from, what happened, what could happened if they attacked me (they did have masks on and their hands in their pockets meant guns) because I was a Portuguese citizen and while his little brother kept screaming threats and improperares and my band watched in panic, I could reach out to the gang leader which not only told off his brother but also shook my hand, telling me words I will never forget: "Have a blessed day, brother." And we both went to our homes.

I could now stop to observe a lot what's happening to one of the most beautiful and spectacular countries in the world: the 70.000 people who died of drug abuse; the tent cities all over the place; the misery and the chaos but I won't go any further. 

I just wish to extend an olive branch to the people who almost attacked me, and yes, we are brothers and maybe victims of a cruel, money-oriented world, a world without a shred of value to show for.

Also, I want to embrace all the Moonspell North-American and Canadian fans and ask them for their empathy and forgiveness, while I offer, hereby, my best explanation of why I dread the thought of another tour in the States.

I never went public with this but I felt it was the time, so we can keep watching for ourselves and respect one another as I respected that gang leader and he respected me back. 

Goth help America, happy holidays y'all, don't forget to follow my new blog for more of this and that.

[the-necessary-unnecessary]

hey, can you tell us a bit about racism in Spain? I'm incredibly uneducated about it, and I don't know much about Spanish history especially racism wise so it would be really nice to get an insight from you about it.

this is a big question, since Spain’s relationship with xenophobia dates back centuries and I’m neither the most qualified person to take you through it nor someone who has suffered from Spanish society’s racist tendencies. However I’ll try to piece a bit of something together and maybe other people can add on if there’s other stuff to include. Also, this is mainly Spanish history from a racism perspective, there are many other positive things in other areas that I haven’t included (patriota pero no mucho)

So basically, up until the 15th century, Spain (in its then form) was a relatively harmonious melting pot of different cultures. With the Roman invasion, settlements and a Visigoth takeover (Germanic population) thereafter, Christianity was pretty firmly established in the country/iberian peninsula by the 2nd Century AD. In 711 AD the Moors, who had control over Islamic Africa, invaded the peninsula and established a Caliphate named Al-Andalus which had a particular stronghold in the south: in Andalusia and their Córdoban capital. Rule was stronger or weaker depending on the region but largely Islamic rule was established and Jewish and Catholic people were treated as second class citizens. Córdoba became the wealthiest, largest and most sophisticated city in Europe by the end of the tenth century, with trade and rich intellectual North African traditions forming a unique culture in the region.

There is a strong historical basis that during a lot of this period there was pockets of ‘La Convivencia’ ie. the co-existence of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Like for example, around Toledo where in universities the three backgrounds contributed to tremendous amounts of sharing of knowledge etc.

However, from about the 9th century onwards the Catholics who still held strong points right in the north, begun ‘la Reconquista’, the “reconquest,” where they began chipping away at the Caliphate’s dominance. By the early 11th century they had gained more land than was held by the Muslims and 1492 is where we set our next scene.

This is probably one of the biggest and most path changing years in Spanish history. Most known for being the year when Columbus landed in America, this enabled the start of Spanish imperlism which would extend to almost 5 centuries afterwards, conquering territories in South America, Africa and Asia and subjecting them to imperialistic rule and policies of white totalitarian dominance.

The second important happening in this year was the fall of Granada, the last remaining territory the Caliphate had in Spain, signifying the end of Muslim rule in the country. They were, as expected, thrown out of the country in their droves and many others were forced into hiding being subject to situations that would only get worse with the Inquisition in full swing.

The third, and last, big event in this year was outlined in the Alhambra Decree where the expulsion of all practicing Jews was announced. Now this had already followed the forced conversion tens of thousands of Jews had been subjected to in 1391 and 1415 (ie. crusades and masacres against them). As a result of the Alhambra decree and the prior persecution, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and around 160,000 were expelled.

This ended religious diversity in Spain, the Inquisition sealed this fate. If you’ve heard of one thing about all of this I’m sure it’s the spanish inquisition. Primarily set up to identify heretics among those who converted from Judaism and Islam to Catholicism and ensure the establishment of the Catholic monarchy, it became a method of torture, fear and murder for those who were perceived to cause any threat to the Spanish catholic order. The effects of the Inquisition are widely debated, with some saying the death toll and magnitude has been blown up by the Protestants in other European countries at the time and does not show the full picture of the hundreds of thousands of converted jews and muslims who remained and overtime became integrated into Catholic society. Whilst others remaining firm to the devastating measure of these actions and the ‘pure blood’ mentality it created. What’s for certain though, is that by the end of the Inquisition in 1834 very little religious nor ethnic diversity remained in Spain.

Jump forward about 100 years and the Spanish Empire is no more after the 1898 crisis, there’s a weird back and forth period with Republics and Monarchies and dictatorships until the Civil War broke out in 1936. It lasted until 1939 when the Nationalists, led by Franco, took total control of the country and submitted it to a dictatorship that would last until his death in 1975. I don’t even know where to begin with a period that many people see as rosy and many others ignore completely whilst Historians have now gone so far as to call the 1940s and 50s the ‘Spanish Holocaust’. However I’ll break it down to one or two main things that have predominantly spurred on today’s racist attitudes.

During the Civil Rights movements of the 50s and 60s Spain was largely immune to the winds of changes due to their isolationist policies and dictatorial power holds. We didn’t take part in any of the dialogue nor go through any racial reconciliation, at least to much a lesser extent than most other countries. It’s quite a common thing to say that what much of europe did in 70 years we’ve only had time to do in 45, and there’s much of a grain of truth in this.

A famous conservative spanish politician called David Aznar defended these views and can be extrapolated into the sentiment that existed to facilitate the transition to democracy and still remain today: "In the democratic transition there were implicit and explicit agreements. One was that we Spaniards don't want to look to the past. Let's not disturb the graves and hurl bones at one another.” As a society, we hate to think about the past, it’s just not widely done. There’s ONE museum solely dedicated to the Civil War, the Historical Memory Law passed in 2007 to try and increase the rights of victims and their families was met by so much opposition and is devastatingly underfunded etc etc. This still translates to spaniards’ views on racism, saying it just doesn’t exist here and moving on. There’s a refusal to confront this and microagressions are ingrained in the culture.

As I’ve kind of mentioned before, issues of race extend much further than towards just black people which is why the US BLM movement cannot simply be traced onto Spain. People who are originally from Latin America face extreme stereotypes and varying forms of discrimination against them as do Arab populations and other people who have immigrated from MENA countries plus the large Roma communities. 

The refugee crisis has further perpetuated the stigma around African immigrants in the past years, whilst the social effects of the 2008 Financial Crisis and beyond also continue to contribute to a xenophobic and nativist perspective where true spaniards should be prioritised with jobs, opportunities etc. For example, the alt-right wing party Vox that’s blatantly racist, anti-immigrants etc posted something with the slogan ‘Spanish Lives Matter’ the other day. They are purposefully incendiary.  

Anyways, hope this was a suitable start for you, you can’t summarise millennia worths of history into a few paragraphs but I tried my best. Also there are obviously many who stand for none of these values, politicians who have tried to right these wrongs, activists who keep fighting the fight, people who have broken down barriers and areas where there’s complete coexistance. However the fact remains that these views and ideas are ingrained in people’s minds, theres blatant job discrimination and a lack of equal opportunities despite laws that may have been put in place.

I’m going to point anyone who has got this far to a couple of articles about racism from an Anglo-Saxon perspective below, racist football culture is almost always mentioned. Being a black traveller in Spain; Same Spanish Holocaust link as before but an extremely important book review read; Irish perspective on the Enigma of Spanish Racism; Racism? What Racism? Asks Spain; Opinion: Racism Is Alive and kicking in Spain